Baseball on Lanai
Players enjoying season
Jake Ropa is not only having fun playing during the current Lanai Little League season, he has his eyes on the future.
Ropa, 12, is one of 28 youngsters on Lanai playing baseball while school is limited to distance learning for most students throughout Maui County. Ropa is doing his schoolwork through Kamehameha Schools middle school online classes.
“It’s really fun because it’s the only sport we can play right now, so it’s just been great to see friends and stuff like that,” Ropa said of the Little League season that picked back up in July after a shutdown due to COVID-19 concerns.
Games are held Tuesdays and Fridays between two teams — the Herd and the Warriors — while joint practices take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, all at Lanai Little League field near Dole Park in the center of Lanai City.
The teams include players from 8 to 12 years old, but the younger kids face younger pitching, while the 11and 12-year-olds face older pitching.
“It’s been really fun because when we were young we used to get help from the Majors (11-12 division), so now we get to help the younger kids,” Ropa said.
Nearly all of the youngsters on Lanai are aware of Naighel
Calderon, who starred for Lanai High School in football, basketball and baseball in the Maui Interscholastic League. He was The Maui News MIL 2018-19 Boy Athlete of the Year — the only Lanai athlete to ever receive the honor — and is now playing baseball for the University of Hawaii.
“I always think about that, I always think about how I want to be better than him,” Ropa said.
Gerard Kaukeano is the head coach of the Warriors, one of six coaches involved with the league. The others are Curtis Reese, Coop DeRenne, John Montgomery, Christian Yumol and Joe Pavsek.
“With Jake’s response, ‘I know who Naighel is, but I want to be better,’ that’s the kind of mindset that we like to encourage here … they don’t even look at (Calderon) as a superstar, they look at him as a Lanai guy,” said Kaukeano, a 25-year-old who played several sports for Lanai High before graduating in 2013.
Kaukeano said baseball is the only game going on in Lanai City right now, but it is playing a crucial role.
“Just by allowing the kids to come out, having the privilege of having the kids out here working on skills, maintaining social distance yet we’re a team,” he said. “It just develops character as well. It humbles the kids, it helps them with discipline. We’re here to help with their parents, so it’s a community thing, too.”
The youngsters are enjoying a competitive season — going into this week’s final two games, the Herd and Warriors were tied 3-3 in head-to-head contests after a walk-off win by the Herd on Friday.
Millie Pavsek, 11, is a sixthgrader who attends Trinity Lutheran School on Oahu, but she and her family have been living on Lanai for several months.
“It is actually really fun to get out and play,” said Pavsek, who plays shortstop for the Herd. “We always get to play with each other and at least we get some exercise.”
She is one of five girls playing in the league.
“It’s exciting when you get a hit from a boy because they are usually the hardest hitters on this team — when I stop the ball I’m, like, really surprised,” Pavsek said.
The Lanai Little League season was going strong with two teams and about 24 total players when COVID-19 shut it down in March; to date, the island has yet to record any active cases of the virus. A few of the kids didn’t return in July when things were able to get going again, but as kids wandered by the field and asked if they could play, they were welcomed with open arms.
“That’s the best part, the kids see other kids having fun, they see them yelling and laughing — they want to be a part of it,” Kaukeano said. “They say, ‘That looks interesting, I want to be a part of that.’ We lost a few, but as soon as we started up again we got about six more kids.”